History

Gembird Europe BV has been founded in 1997 in the Netherlands by IT-professionals with ambitions to become a market leader in the field of computer accessories and peripherals.

From the very beginning the company strategy has been to develop its own innovative computer products. It all started from the surge protectors "Silver shield". Modern sleek design, special features, robust structure have delivered some first customers to the company. More innovation and diversification into the other computer product range followed shortly: mobile racks with some unique features, modular KVM switches and KVM switches with power management, MUSORFO omni-scrolling and MUSTORO touch-on wireless mice - all being first of their kind on the computer market.

The company was one of the pioneers to launch its own external hard-drive solution called Flexi-Drive. "Use hard disks as floppies" - urged Gembird the end users. Some critics could not understand this idea at the age of streamers and floppy drives. However the growing loyal to Gembird customer base was able to appreciate the company vision.

By the year 2000 the Research and Development department had matured. Next to the mechanical, electrical, PCB, firmware and software design it has started to develop its own ICs - initially for own range of USB converters.

A great expansion followed in 2001-2003. The company opened its own factories in China (originally in Zhuhai and then in Shenzhen and Ningbo). The motivation for that was not only to cut down the cost but also to be able to have a say in the Quality Control. The Quality assurance has always been one of the highest priorities of the company but with the own production facilities it has become possible to move it to a completely new level. Very soon the factories were certified to ISO-9002 standard and "Shaping the perfection" was adopted as the new company slogan.

The European operations continued to grow. The company became recognized as one of the major players on the European market in the field of computer accessories. Since 2001 Gembird displayed its innovations annually at Cebit in Germany. The products of Gembird won numerous awards in the most popular European magazines - PC World, PC Go, ComputerBild and so on. By 2004 Gembird already had 5 own offices in Europe and strong distributors in more than 40 different countries.

It was time for a breakthrough innovation - eMic products (www.emic4all.com). The idea being - 'put your keyboard away, use eMic every day' - as well as the incorporating (again the first ever) of unheard by this time Cloud technology into the hardware had sounded perhaps too revolutionary to the customers of those days. However these products helped Gembird open many doors to the biggest European retailers and earned the company a cutting edge innovation expert reputation. By that time Gembird has started to protect its own intellectual rights by means of international patents.

In 2005-2007 Gembird saw expansion of its operation in China. A sales office in Shenzhen was created to serve the global customer base. A number of world biggest OEM clients started to use the factory production services. Gembird became better known in the quickly emerging internal Chinese market as well.

The year 2008 - the world is in financial crisis but Gembird keeps growing. It is in this very year that Gembird has moved to his newly built European headquarters. And using its own world-level developed logistics facility based on Gembird-developed RFID technology opened its doors to service what was at this point Gembird product range numbering already more than a thousand different items.

It was about at this time that Gembird noticed that Power managers (original Gembird innovation from 2001) were becoming more and more prominent in the sales figures. The company recognized this as a trend and made big endeavors towards embracing green energy-saving technologies. To emphasize this strategy the company introduced a new trademark EnerGenie - intended to deal with the energy-related, environmentally friendly products.

EnerGenie is all about innovation, all about environment, all about a better, green world. At the cornerstone of the EnerGenie lie a range of unique power managers - computer interface power strips, which allow people to control their power consumption from anywhere in the world, via their mobile phones. Power meters provide a way for people to analyze their power consumption visualizing the data as graphs on the screens of their electronic devices. Both technologies are based upon Cloud-based energenie.com servers.

In 2010 Gembird won a European grant for development of a completely new product - e-paper printer. This solution which is to be presented for the first time at the beginning of 2012 at CES (Las Vegas) is a final push towards a truly paperless office. Save a tree - what the world does need at this moment - has finally become possible. No cartridge costs, fully silent, fast, plug and play operation - this is what would make the future customers of this product happy. It is a no coincidence that the e-paper printer has been nominated by the CES for the innovation award of the year 2012.

More wonderful products and brilliant ideas are being developed within the R&D department of Gembird at this very moment. With these products the Gembird ethos continues to make this world just a little bit better place to live.